Easter: risen
I was thinking of the word “risen”. I went to cooking classes when I was a girl at school, and sometimes, on a good day, my cooking was spectacular. I will never forget the swell of pleasure when the cooking teacher picked up my scones and said – “Look at these! Just ASKING to be broken!”. But some days – notably the day I took my cooking exam – it really wasn’t. Everything sank. Everything came out wrong.
Easter is a day when everything is supposed to rise: not just the cakes from the oven, but hearts and souls and spirits are supposed to rise, in concert with Jesus rising from the grave itself. He has harrowed hell; he has brought with him those among the dead who hunger for his life; he is risen. Hallelujah! He is risen indeed! Hallelujah.
But what do you do if Easter comes and your spirits do not rise? It’s a bad day in the kitchen, in your marriage, with your in-laws or your hormones or your bank balance? What do you do if your job has disintegrated, your hopes are dashed, your dreams didn’t come true – or if, simply for some unaccountable reason, there is no hallelujah in your heart?
There is no need to beat yourself up. Read the story again, and you see that even his first disciples took time to absorb the news. Mary saw it and jumped at it. Peter and John didn’t believe it, half-believed it, went to look and still took a while to take it in. The other disciples took longer – Thomas, according to John, stubbornly refusing to believe what his eyes could not see. And even when the disciples did get the news, they didn’t know quite what to do with it: for a while they still found themselves fishing in Galilee, a little lost in life.
The hallelujah of Easter, the risen spirits, are not always instant. There are weeks and weeks of Easter still to come; the Church calendar celebrates the slow dawning of Easter for fifty days – even longer than the arduous journey of Lent. Today is a promise of things to come, not a climactic moment that you have to catch as it passes. If your heart doesn’t yet say Hallelujah, let your curiosity lead you, let your doubts be voiced and your questions be heard.
Look, and hope, and wait. He is risen. Your good day will come.
11 Responses to “Easter: risen”
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author musician theologian
Maggi has kept a blog since September 2003, writing about theology and faith, the arts and literature, and a little about life and random nonsense...
In an increasingly secularised society few people have a good working knowledge of the Bible. Yet a great deal of our culture is built on stories or ideas that come from the Bible. Literature, art, music, language and even the fabric of our society - such as our justice system - are built on Christian concepts and biblical references. The Writing on the Wall provides a fascinating introduction to the Bible's best-known, and most influential, stories. Each chapter gives some background to the text of the Bible, and shows how the stories have become enmeshed in Western culture. Adam and Eve, the ten plagues of Egypt, The Prodigal Son and Mary Magdalene all feature - along with how the Bible has influenced everyone from Shakespeare to Monty Python, and Caravaggio to Banksy. 
Giving It Up explores the Lenten idea of 'giving up', taking it beyond the traditional idea of simply abstaining from something, and suggesting instead that what we need to give up is our existing ideas about God. With a daily readings for each day of Lent, from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, it follows the heroes of the Bible who had to give up their own too-small ideas about God.
This is Maggi’s bestselling book of daily readings for each day of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. Advent is the beginning of the Church year, and marks the anticipation of the coming Messiah. These readings explore how beginnings and endings in our own lives are illuminated by the different Gospel narratives of Christ's coming.
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Thank you, I needed to read that more than all the Easter comments on Facebook. A combination of pollen, air pollution and stress means that my asthma is the worst it has been for ages and I’m not at church this morning. What makes it worse is that the stress is due to events at church which have resulted in my family being, unfairly in my view, removed from the music team.
This is beautiful. Thank you for sharing.
This song tries to portray that longing for Easter to be a present reality. http://bit.ly/ecgJpx
Maggi, I just found my way to your blog. With the last name Dawn, I thought, written by an author, musician and theologian on Easter, you have to use it in your post. And sure enough you did…”the Church calendar celebrates the slow dawning of Easter for fifty days…”
My husband and I are at the present time not in a church going mode although we did raise our two daughters, from before they were baptized as infants until past the time each of them gave part of the sermon on Youth Sunday, in a Presbyterian faith tradition.
Thank you for being a needed part of my Easter! He is risen indeed!
This seems so relevant to a world that rushes to find a contentment or out on the face that all is well. I love that Easter continues for weeks, I love that I get to say to say Thanks be to God. Alleluia! Alleluia! Throughout the coming weeks.
I am reminded that the whole thing is a journey towards something greater than I can imagine and sometimes it is a reminder of the future hope that is needed. This morning I was reminded of that by the community I grew up worshipping with at a time when I really needed it. Progressively I picked up that ‘risen’ feeling.
For many today will not have felt like that and I hope that they would be reminded that Easter is not something we must rush at. It will come.
Thanks for sharing and I’m going to spread the word about this post.
Beautiful, thank you.
As Jesus rose, so we must rise to his challenge. Can we? I don’t know but we must try.
Thank you. I needed that.
Thank you for this. The hope of the resurrection is for those who feel themselves to be broken, but that’s so easy to forget. Look, hope and wait – words of life.
Thank you for this. My Dad has a genetic illness and topping that there was a big row in our house before church yesterday, so it was a tough day… My faith keeps me hanging on, and I needed this. I know He is risen, it’s what keeps me hoping in the face of the impossible.
An interesting perspective. Not something that had occurred to me before, nor have I heard it mentioned.